UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Wearing an Authentic Arab Body: New Masculinities in Contemporary Photography Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6wv5964b Author Amin, Alessandra Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Wearing an Authentic Arab Body: New Masculinities in Contemporary Photography A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art History by Alessandra Amin 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS Wearing an Authentic Arab Body: New Masculinities in Contemporary Photography by Alessandra Amin Master of Arts in Art History University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor Saloni Mathur, Chair Representations of the veiled woman dominate Western collections of contemporary Middle Eastern art. They are also, however, symbolically inextricable from power structures that propagate derogatory tropes of Arab culture, and their proliferation hinders more incisive inquiries into issues of gender in the Middle East. This paper examines how two Middle Eastern photographers, responding to this predicament, have begun to posit new ways of representing resistant bodies, departing from the tired trope of the veil and, in fact, from the female body altogether. An alternative framework for contesting gender relations in the Middle East and associated Western stereotypes can be found in photographic explorations of masculinity, such as Tanya Habjouqa’s Fragile Monsters (2009) and Tamara Abdul Hadi’s Picture an Arab Man (2009). I argue that these works represent a potential for new and productive inquiries, and innovative means of articulating gendered bodies as resistant to imperialist categories of gender and sexuality. ii The thesis of Alessandra Amin is approved. Dell Upton Meredith Cohen Saloni Mathur, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 iii Table of Contents I. Introduction: Representing the Veil 2 II. Tanya Habjouqa, Fragile Monsters (2009) 11 III. Tamara Abdul Hadi, Picture an Arab Man (2009) 20 IV. Conclusion: Towards a New Vocabulary 29 V. Figures 32 VI. Works Cited 41 iv For many interested in the nexus of gender, imperialism and photography in the Middle East, Malek Alloula’s The Colonial Harem serves as an important point of departure. Alloula's influential text identifies early twentieth-century postcard photography as underwritten by imperial ideology and as enacting an attendant, collective sexual fantasy. Central to his inquiry is the figure of the veiled woman, a source of infinite frustration for the colonial photographer. Present but obscured, her inaccessibility renders the photographer-voyeur obsessed with her unveiling, driving him, in Alloula’s terms, to “force that which disappoints him by its escape.”1 Indeed, the body of the Arab woman is a site of endless fixation for Alloula’s colonial photographers and for the author himself. Histories of colonial suppression and reactionary nationalist discourses have, in many ways, overdetermined the symbol of this othered and obscured body, and the Muslim woman as a photographic and cultural trope remains ubiquitous in popular media today. Representations of the veiled woman are symbolically inextricable from power structures that propagate derogatory tropes of Arab culture, and the proliferation of this trope hinders more incisive inquiries into issues of gender in the Middle East. This paper examines how two Middle Eastern photographers, in response to this predicament, have begun to posit new ways of representing resistant bodies, using methods that depart from the tired trope of the veil and, in fact, from the female body altogether. An alternative framework for contesting gender relations in the Middle East and associated Western stereotypes can be found in photographic explorations of masculinity, such as those by photographers Tanya Habjouqa (b. 1975) and Tamara Abdul Hadi (b.1980). This paper begins with a brief 1 Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 7. 1 historical overview to illustrate the deeply rooted field of connotations underlying the veil as a symbol, and the implications of this trope for contemporary photography, before examining two photographic series, Habjouqa’s Fragile Monsters (2009) and Abdul Hadi’s Picture an Arab Man (2009) I. Introduction: Representing the Veil From the beginning, so-called feminist discourse in the Middle East has, as historian Leila Ahmed has stated, borne “the taint of having served as an instrument of colonial domination,” especially in matters concerning the veil.2 Contemporary discussion of the links between veiling, culture and imperialism finds its historical origins in late-nineteenth-century Egypt, with the 1899 publication of Qassim Amin’s Tahrir al- Mar’a (The Liberation of Woman). This work agitated for the education of women and the reform of marriage laws, as well as for the abolition of the veil, and has traditionally, if problematically, been regarded as marking the introduction of feminism to Arab culture. A French-educated lawyer, Amin saw his country as a backwards nation whose progress was hindered by its traditions, and essentially equated the modernization of Egyptian society with the emulation of European examples. Indeed, despite the seemingly progressive claims of Tahrir al-Mar’a, its concerns were less with the liberation of women for its own sake than with the development of Egypt as a modern, Europeanized nation – concerns that emerged with particular clarity through Amin’s discussion of the veil. 2 Leila Ahmed, “The Discourse of the Veil,” in Veil: Veiling, Representation and Contemporary Art, ed. David A. Bailey et al. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003), 43. 2 While the work’s publication sparked debate about many issues related to women’s rights and gender roles in the greater Middle East, it was Amin’s assertion about the veil that provoked the most vitriol. As Ahmed has pointed out, Muslim intellectuals had previously argued for women’s education and called for reforms in marriage law without inciting heated dispute, but Amin’s work, which considered the veil the essential emblem of women’s oppression as well as a major obstacle to modernized society, caused tremendous uproar. Critics were quick to malign the author as a European sympathizer, and to attribute his stance on the veil to a misplaced reverence for the culture of the colonizer. Ultimately, Tahrir al-Mar’a triggered the first “battle of the veil” in the Arab press, sparking a barrage of related books and articles and inaugurating a new era of discourse, in which the hijab came to signify a broad field of social tensions. From this point forward, as Ahmed notes, “its connotations encompassed… the widening cultural gulf between the different classes in society and the interconnected conflict between the culture of the colonizers and that of the colonized.”3 Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), the Martinican intellectual and anti-colonial thinker, foregrounded this problem in the context of the Algerian revolution by situating the veil directly within a network of political narratives that resonate beyond Algeria to the broader Arab world. In his seminal essay L’Algérie se dévoile (Algeria Unveils Itself) (1959), he observed that the French strategy for eroding Algerian resistance followed a specific formula: “ayons les femmes et le reste suivra.”4 Early French feminism, 3 Ibid., 43. 4 Frantz Fanon, “L’Algérie Se Dévoile,” in L’An V de La Révolution Algérienne (Paris: Éditions François Maspero, 1959), 19. “When we have the women, the rest will follow” (translations mine unless otherwise noted). 3 according to Fanon, played a major role in mobilizing this strategy; by suggesting that Algerian patriarchy was to blame for the disenfranchisement of Algerian society, rather than French colonialism, French women’s groups served both to sow unrest within the family and to pacify the resistance occurring among Algerian women. Central to the allegedly liberatory discourse espoused by such groups were questions of dress; the veil became a primary – and highly visible – symbol of oppression, whereas Western dress was encouraged alongside a sense of French citizenship as a vehicle for women’s liberation. Fanon’s account of the Arab woman identifies her, primarily, as a key to the conquest of men. She is implicated, first and foremost, as a pawn through which French colonial forces can undermine the structure of Algerian society: “chaque voile qui tombe,” writes Fanon, “chaque visage qui s’offre au regard hardi et impatient de l’occupant experiment en négatif que l’Algérie commence à se renier et accepte le viol du colonisateur.”5 Here, the exposure of the Algerian woman’s body directly signifies cultural surrender to colonial ideology. However, Fanon does discuss the role of women in the revolution from a standpoint that was progressive for its moment. As literary scholar Anne McClintock has noted, “the problem of women’s agency” is “brilliantly raised as a question” by Fanon where it had not been by others, albeit as a question that is ultimately and “abruptly foreclosed.”6 Algerian women, Fanon insists, were not all ignorant of the political motives beneath the discourse of dress, and many manipulated it to the benefit of the revolution. The unveiled Algerian woman “évolue comme un 5 Fanon 25. “Each veil that falls, each face that offers itself to the occupier’s bold